


The Scientific Method (of Friendship)

by Cartwheellou



Series: After Summer's End [3]
Category: Camp Camp (Web Series)
Genre: Attempted Friendship, Canon Compliant, Gen, Neil Has Social Anxiety, Pranks, post-camp, projector fires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 01:39:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16546367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cartwheellou/pseuds/Cartwheellou
Summary: Friends were not for Neil. He knew that, but he thought that maybe if he cracked the code, he could find some anyway. Whether or not his attempt would just be a big embarrassment, or whether or not it was a good idea to help this random kid destroy school property, was a whole other matter to consider.





	The Scientific Method (of Friendship)

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you jumping in, Ms. Newberry is the science teacher at Neil's school and he hates her because she sucks. For the conversation Neil references, please read—
> 
> “What do you want me to do, Neil?! Nothing I ever do is gonna make my parents care!” he shouted, waving his hands around.
> 
> “Who cares? Fuck them! If you can be gone for the whole weekend and they don’t even notice, don’t waste any time thinking about them! You don’t have to be so edgy, Max. Make some friends at school. Find someone that hates your least favorite teacher and get them to fuck up their office with you. Nikki and I don’t have to be all you have!”
> 
> Max grumbled, shoving his head off to the side. “It’s not like I can just magically fix my life, Neil.”
> 
> “No, but you might be able to do something if you try. You made friends at summer camp—it’s worth checking to see if there’s someone worthwhile in your everyday life.”
> 
> “Stop making it sound so easy.”
> 
> “It’s easier than you’re making it sound—especially for you, Max. If you can manipulate a con man into giving a confession to the FBI, you can convince some brat you’re cool.”
> 
> “If it’s so easy, then why don’t you make some friends?”
> 
> “I’m the victim of vicious bullying; it kinda puts a damper on any friendships I might want to enstate.”

Neil comes back to his and Max’s night time conversation with startling frequency. It’s not even Max’s words that plague him, but his own. The ease in which he described making friends was daunting. Could it be that easy? Is reaching out all someone needs to do? Not for himself, he thinks. Ostracized kids can’t make friends. Friends, he reminds himself, just aren’t for him, Max and Nikki being clear exceptions. How did he become friends with them again? The very specific moment that Max looked at him with something other than disinterest eluded his memory. When did Nikki first bother dragging him off by the hand?

Neil supposed the only reason there was any interaction at all was out of necessity. Max had wanted to leave, and it seemed the only person who would help him was Neil. That was all it was, right? Situational? If there had been no prompt, would they have ever been friends? Would either of them said, ‘I wouldn’t mind getting to know this person’?

More importantly, is it possible to recreate such a scenario? Does friendship follow this pattern? Is necessity the key to making friends? How would Neil even go about creating necessity?

It was all almost too much to consider while watching a random kid Neil had never seen in more than the passing sneak into Ms. Newberry’s room. Neil knew she was gone. Neil also knew the other kid knew she was gone. They had both seen her leave, key turning in the handle lock to seal the door behind her as teachers do when they leave for extended periods of time. But of the three of them, only Neil had noticed the kid sticking a piece of tape over the door jam while Ms. Newberry was still inside, preemptively preventing the lock from ever clicking shut. Really, there was no question about this kid’s malintent. The only true question was whether or not Neil was going to do anything about it.

Neil almost hated himself for what he had told Max that night.  _ Fuck up their office _ , he said.  _ Get someone to do it with you _ , he said. Of course, he hadn’t meant for his words to be turned back on him, and of course, the kid hadn’t peeled the tape off the door jam yet despite going inside, so it wouldn’t be hard at all to let himself in. It would be hard in a very different way. It would be hard in the way of conversing and keeping eye contact and explaining why he followed this other kid into the room and trying to work around the fact that he didn’t have any friends in a 40 mile radius. If Neil entered, would that even make a difference? Would he be capable of doing something other than embarrassing himself?

Neil lowered his head, fingernails biting into his palms. He felt like a snot nosed kindergartener wailing about going to school on the first day.  _ Wah, meeting people and making friends _ . When had he become so pathetic he couldn’t even psych himself up for a conversation? Shaking his hands out, Neil stormed over to Ms. Newberry’s door and grabbed the handle, yanking harder than he should have. The door, which was unfit to its frame, clattered open, pulling free with a bang. Behind it was Ms. Newberry’s dark room, with only a single kid standing by the projector cart. Then, staring at this other kid’s terrified face, their hands poised over Ms. Newberry’s currently lidless projector, Neil realized he had no plan and nothing was coming out of his mouth and his limbs weren’t moving. Was he doing it right? They were both officially trapped in the situation. Did this count as creating necessity?

The other kid didn’t move, his gaze wide and hopeful in the way he thought maybe Neil would step back out of the doorframe and shut him back into his privacy. Swallowing, Neil stepped into the room and pulled the door behind him, distinctly noting that, despite the fact that the lock did not click, the manner in which he was sealed into the room was very final.

“Ms. Newberry isn’t… here,” the other kid stuttered, for lack of a better phrase.

“I know. What… what are you doing?” Neil asked.

The kid snapped his hands down to his sides, leaving the projector’s innards bared to the open air. “Nothing.”

“No, I mean… what are you trying to do?” Neil started to shuffle over, chin tipping up so he could peek into the electronics.

“I told you, nothing. It, um… fell off.” He nodded seriously. 

Neil cocked his head at him. “The secure plastic shell… what is that, screwed down? managed to fall off; and now you’re sticking your hands inside of it in attempts to fix it?”

“I mean— Well, the thing is— I’m… trying to…” The kid slumped, heaving a forlorn sigh. “Fine—okay. You caught me. I was gonna tamper with the projector. What are you gonna do about it though, huh? Go get Ms. Newberry? I’ll be gone before you can find her, and it’s not like you can tell her who I am.”

Neil nodded. “It’d be a problem if I wanted to rat you out. I’m not here to do that, though.” He waved his hand, hoping it came off more suave than it felt. “I thought I could… help.”

The kid was kind enough—or caught off guard enough—to ignore Neil’s voice crack. “Oh. Um, really? I mean, there isn’t really… I didn’t think it through all that well? I’m just here—”

“—Fire, sparks, inverted image, blank screen? What are you going for? You’ve gotta have a plan.” Neil was already a skittish person; he didn’t know if he could handle having a skittish friend.

“I mean, I was just gonna rip some wires out and take whatever I could get?”

“That plan… could use some work.” Neil checked inside and around, fully taking stock of what had been accomplished so far. “For starters, unplug it first.” Neil reached down below the cart and ripped the cord out of its place in the extension cable. “I can’t imagine anything more embarrassing than getting electrocuted in this kind of situation. And we can do better than just ripping out wires. Take your pick, but know I’m partial to fire.” He walked over to the arts and crafts station and selected a pair of scissors, holding them up to his face to inspect the same way a surgeon might inspect their scalpel. At least with this, he was in his element.

“I mean, if you could actually make it start on fire when she turned it on, that would be super cool. Like, a little fire though, right? Not a big one? Having to exit the school and causing actual property damage would be less cool… Maybe you should just make it have an inverted image? Wait. No. No, no, do the fire. Just… small. Make it a small fire.”

Rolling his eyes, Neil answered, “I can make it small. When I say fire, I mostly just mean smoking. I wouldn’t make it  _ explode _ or anything.” He turned and walked back over, feeling as though he should be snapping some latex gloves on his hands or something before starting.

The kid watched as Neil descended upon the projector, expertly snipping seemingly random wires; he couldn’t seem to hold back, “...But could you?”

Smug, Neil answered, “Yeah.”

In awe, the kid whispered, “Wow. That’s… cool.” There was a strange silent beat before he cleared his throat and asked, “Hey—have I seen you around before?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Neil flickered his gaze up briefly, trying to deduce the nature of the question. “We’ve never had a class together, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“But I’ve seen you around.”

“Maybe.” Neil shifted his weight on his feet.

Finally getting to the root of what he actually wanted to say— “...You’re that kid Randall always beats up; right?”

Neil flinched, the blade of his scissor unintentionally knocking into a few circuits. “Some might say that—others might consider it rude to recognize people by who kicks them,” he announced faux-offhandedly. He wasn’t beat up anymore—Randall wouldn’t even look at him since Max and Nikki’s visit—but it was the principle of the matter.

The other guy looked down, appropriately mortified, hands clenching in self-chastisement for not holding his tongue. “Sorry.”

“Yeah, whatever. My name’s Neil, though, and we can just stick to that as an identifier. What’s your name?”

“Tim.”

“Fire’s good?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” In a silence neither of them were quite sure how to fill, Neil bowed his head and set to his nimble endeavor of stripping wires. He couldn’t place it, but he and Tim didn’t click the same way he and Max and Nikki did. Or at least, their interaction was all jumbled—predictable, with conversational stumble after conversational stumble. Something was just missing. Something was wrong. The silence blanketing them—it wasn’t a comforting one, like the ones he and Max often indulged in. It was empty.

“So… not to sound, uh, ungrateful, or anything, Neil, but what are you doing here?” Tim asked, fingers laced in front of him.

Neil shrugged, staving off providing an answer. He didn’t think ‘making friends’ sounded very mature, but lying and claiming he had also been planning to prank Ms. Newberry at the very same time didn’t seem very realistic. “I saw you come in and took the opportunity.”

“Opportunity?”

“I love a good opportunity to cause some chaos.” Maybe it wasn’t the total truth, but he had to admit—this very idea had crossed his mind before. So, really, he wasn’t getting two things done?

“You never seemed the type.” Tim continued, as though he knew him from more than passes in the hallway.

“Well, you don’t know me very well,” Neil answered. Neil knew what kind of person he displayed as. A nerdy, quiet, pushover loser too scared to rock the boat. He couldn’t say it wasn’t grounded in truth, but Neil liked to think he was too smart to be docile. There was too much of a thrill in troublemaking to be a golden child. Maybe that opinion was cultivated over the summer. “I happen to enjoy making a habit of such things. And you? Is this your first time doing this or something?” Neil raised his brow, not looking up from his twining two bare wires together.

Tim chuckled nervously. “What gives you that idea?”

Neil shrugged. “You don’t seem like you’re having much fun.” Neil, at the very least, was taking pleasure in knowing what would happen when Ms. Newberry turned her projector on.

“Well, I’m here on a dare, so…”

“Oh.” Neil’s hands stilled. “Isn’t this cheating, then? You should be doing this.”

Tim flapped him off with an eager hand. “No way. They won’t know, and whatever you’re doing is bound to be  _ way  _ cooler.”

“Okay.” Neil resumed his work. “So, what’s with the dare?”

“I don’t know. My friend was complaining that none of us ever do anything cool, and I had to open my big mouth and tell her that I do plenty of cool things. Of course, I don’t, so when they asked me to name some, I couldn’t think of any. I was told I had to go sneak into a teachers room and set up a prank in order to ‘prove my statement.’”

Neil quirked a smile. “That’s fair, but I’m pretty sure they meant that as a ‘cover the windows in scotch tape’ kind of thing.”

“That’s not a half bad idea, actually. And I mean, I could have done something like that, but I thought, ‘might as well take the opportunity to fuck Ms. Newberry over,’ right? If they’re gonna make me stick my neck out, I might as well get something from it.”

“No arguments on any of those points, but… why Ms. Newberry? What did she do to you?”

Tim shifted on on his feet, shoulders shrugging. The spiteful twist of his lips, however, told a different story. “My friend had this… problem. Ms. Newberry snooped around in her business and reported it, making a bigger problem from my friend even though it was  _ none of her business _ . So none of us like her… at all.”

Neil lifted the corner of his lip. Ms. Newberry was just the type to do something like that—assuming middle schoolers were incapable of having real life problems.

“What about you? If you’re here, you’ve gotta have something against her too, right?” Tim returned.

“Oh, she just consistently treats me like I’m five and assumes I’m completely incompetent about everything. Add that to the fact that I then have to spend an hour five days a week with her.” Tim rolled his eyes in agreement, egging Neil on. “Honestly, I don’t even know why she teaches middle school. She acts like she wants to teach babies—and she might as well be, based on how the class acts! She lumps me in with the rest of the population that finds gluing together pieces of construction paper intellectually stimulating enough to be considered learning.”

“Well, that’s—it’s not that people like it because it’s hard, or anything!” Tim rebuffed, cheeks blazing. “It’s actually  _ because _ its super easy that kids find it nice. Nobody wants to be here, right? So at least we don’t have to be here  _ and  _ challenged.” He nodded, as if help convince Neil of truth.

Neil paused for a second, turning his gaze up to bore into Tim’s, dispelling any notion Tim might have had that Neil agreed with him in any manner. “Are you telling me… you actually like her class?”

“No!” Tim barked, violently waving a hand through the air. “I can hardly stand to be in the same room as her! But…  _ before  _ all the stuff with my friend went down, I liked it.” He was at least ashamed enough to scratch his face, turned off to the side.

Neil shook his head, disgusted. “No one likes being here. So on top of all that, you’d rather the time you spend here be pointless? You’d rather waste an hour being unhappy instead of at least putting it to good use? For most of the useless school day, I might as well be working at a gas station for no pay. And you too, if you’re doing arts and crafts in science class.”

“I mean… I guess,” Tim admitted.

“That’s not even my problem with it. She can run a shitty class if she wants to.”

“Then what is?”

“The rest of the class is going to rot in their future burger flipping job, but she has the audacity to act like that’s  _ my _ future! Reducing my time to such trivial bullshit… pretends I don’t know the difference between carbon 12 and 14! I bet  _ she  _ doesn’t even know anymore! The  _ least  _ she could do is treat me like a scientist instead of a  _ baby _ , but she can’t even do that. I’ll show her,” Neil threatened darkly, finishing twining two wires together with a sharp flick of his wrist, as if wringing a neck. 

“Hey… you’re not planning on having her know  _ we _ did this, right?” Tim asked nervously. “I mean, she can’t figure out is was  _ us _ . Right?”

“She’s not gonna think  _ anyone _ did this; all signs that the wires were tampered with are going to burn up. And even if she  _ knew _ someone did this, she’d never suspect any student—we’re too below her radar. To suspect us, she’d have to actually consider us capable. Today’s not the day I prove I’m smarter than her, but it’ll come eventually.” Tim sagged with relief.

A few conversationless seconds passed before Neil announced, “But for now… we’re… done!” He straightened up with small pizzazz hands and awarded himself a high five in a mostly unawkward manner. “At the beginning of class, she’ll try to show something, find it not to be plugged in, fix it and turn it on, and there we go!” They shared a smile. “Oh, go grab the fire extinguisher, would you? And make sure it’s not expired!”

“Uhh…” Tim swung around, scanning the walls and finding them fruitless. “I’m gonna go get the one from the hallway.” He scampered out of the room, leaving the door slightly ajar behind him.

Neil hummed to himself, collecting the stripped wire casings in the palm of his hand. At the very least, he accomplished one of the things he set out to do. And he and Tim had talked… right? It didn’t go  _ terribly _ . Was it enough? 

Neil walked over to dump the wire casings in the trash bin. Tim came back in to place the fire extinguisher next to the cart—someone would have enough wits about to spray it. They both filed out of the room, Tim crouching down by the door jam to peel the tape off.

Neil watched Tim pick at the edge of the tape with his fingernail and rolled his lips, searching for some way to prolong their interaction. It seemed that, at the end of an experience, it was much easier to lose hope than it was in the beginning. Perhaps he truly hadn’t accomplished what he set out to do. They didn’t feel like friends, or anything beyond… friendly. Should he even try to prolong their interaction? Until now, Neil was confident he had been able to come across as at least a little cool, but asking to… hang out more? Eat lunch together? Decidedly not cool. Such immediate alliances after meeting seemed to be acceptable on the first couple days of school exclusively, when everyone was new and weird and awkward and everyone needed to quickly figure out who was okay and who wasn’t—but this late into the game, the only weird and awkward one was Neil. He absolutely could not ask to eat lunch with Tim and his friends. Any attempt to drag out the conversation a few extra minutes would be unnecessary and stilted. He could feel the moment slipping away like graphene against DLC.

Tim stood up, tape retrieved, a grin on his face. “Well, thanks for your help, Neil. I’ll see you around.” They waved to each other and Tim set off down the hall, leaving severed ends behind him. Tim was headed back to lunch—back to his friends—and it was undoubtable that whatever story he would tell wouldn’t contain Neil. Tim was supposed to pull the prank by himself, right? Nobody would discredit themselves for the sake of telling a pointless truth.

Neil’s waving hand stalled, the fingers curled in the embers of his goodbye crumpled near his chest. He wondered if he had done something just a little not right. Clearly, necessity could not be the only factor to friendship, or he would have made friends with Tim. Maybe he and Tim just weren’t compatible? Neil went looking for a troublemaker and found some nervous kid caught in a dare—not quite the same thing. But making friends had been so  _ easy _ at camp; they practically fell in his lap. There hadn’t been a single person he couldn’t have sat and talked with if he had desired. Why was school different? There must be some people here that are similar to kids from camp; why couldn’t he find them? Was he looking in the wrong place? Neil himself was an unchanging factor, so was it then the school setting that dictated whether or not Neil was able to make friends?

That didn’t make sense. Was camp just an anomaly? Was there something about camp that drew a certain type of person—the type of person Neil was compatible with? Was school simply a place Neil was truly… isolated?

Neil’s hand dropped limp back to his side. Another prime example to add to the collection. Friends just weren’t for him.

**Author's Note:**

> Rubbing graphene against diamond like carbon (DLC) creates graphene nano scrolls which are nearly frictionless. The more you know.
> 
> If you liked this, bother checking out the rest of the series!


End file.
